Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we have a live session from our GoGoAgent Academy that we did here in Florida in February, talking about converting leads.

If you've noticed in the live sessions, we've been working through each of the listing agent lifestyle elements. We started by talking about the various ways to collect all the names you need, and today we're focusing on what to do with them once you have them… converting those leads.

We had some great concepts and some great conversations.

You’re going to get a lot of great ideas you can implement in your business today.

Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep024

Barbara: I was up til after midnight talking with my husband about all this.

Dean: Is this a breakthrough or breakdown?

Barbara: It's total breakthrough.

Dean: Okay, good.

Barbara: I got buy in from my husband, we're in.

Dean: Okay.

Barbara: So that's great. But it took me hours to try and do a replay of what we did yesterday, which was great because I may understand it a little better trying to explain it. I certainly came up with a lot more questions.

Dean: Yes, perfect.

Barbara: Thanks.

Dean: Good, cool.

Speaker 1: I think you said yesterday you might have some different ideas, or other things that people are doing for those post cards to the neighborhoods?

Dean: For listings?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so the February blah, blah, blah report, that type of thing.

Dean: Well, what I've noticed, like where I've pointed out, and I don't do it, but I noticed that one thing that people often try and do, is add something to try and think that it's going to speed up the process, or improve the responses. And I think that the thing that I pointed out was that it's sort of smuggling convincing into. And I think that the reason that the post cards work so well, is because we're not trying to convince anybody of anything, right? We're not trying to future pace that they're going to list their house with us.

The thing that we're doing is we're just trying to get invisible prospects. To raise their hand and take one baby step forward, because I know that if somebody moves forward a little bit, if they are interested, paying attention to, and curious about what their house is worth, for most situations it's because that's on their mind, and there's some reason that they want to know why their house is worth.

So if you take a population of a thousand people, you take a thousand neighborhoods, and we know that 60 or 100 of them are going to sell in the next 12 months, there's no way just in looking at them that we could predict which 60 are the ones that are going to sell, right? But if we send a post cards and people ask for a report on the sales in the neighborhood, that's a much higher propensity to sell a person than somebody who doesn't, they're blind to that.

Speaker 1: Is there any other indicator besides that one, though, that we can-?

Dean: When I go back to this, the process to come to, when I go through this process, I go and look for- and I'm talking about when I do it for other businesses too, not just for real estate. Like I said, we've applied the eight profit rules to real estate already; I've already done that for you. But when I do it to a party rental business, I'm looking for what's the genesis thought that puts them on the path that's moving them towards hiring a party rental company? So if I back it all the way up, what's the triggering event? The triggering event is they got engaged. That's where it triggers. If I could know the moment that somebody gets engaged, now I can target all my marketing just to the people that are on the path to having a wedding, right?

And so when I look at that for us, that the triggering thought of selling their house or moving or doing anything is, "Well what can I get for my place?" And if they're thinking that thought, then having the neighborhood data is the most important thing. I call it the difference between compelling and convincing. And so when you're saying, "Sell your house in less than 60 days, guaranteed," or "Call Tom and start packing," kind of stuff, where you're trying to convince somebody to list with you, is very different than just being selflessly offering market data. That the fact that they want that market data indicates that they're on a path to selling their house. Now we can start convincing them after we've done that. I just look at it to maximize the response, you know? That's the whole way that I look at it.

Speaker 1: So you're thinking that a book could not be one of the very first steps, then.

Dean: It could be. Some books are, certainly when you have a book title like when you look at the-and I use books all the time. Books are my number one thing for lead generating. But compared to a book called "Seven Things You Need To Know Before You Hire a Party Rental Company", versus "101 Great Places To Have an Outdoor Wedding in Toronto". That's much more compelling to a bride who's on their mind that part of the process, right?

I'll talk about branding and packaging social media for "Seven Biggest social media Mistakes Hockey Players Make," versus the 2018 US Hockey scholarship directory. You see what I'm saying? And I use other examples because you get it when you're seeing it without the logistics goggles of your real estate business.

Speaker 1: So there should be some sort of a book title that we can brainstorm that would satisfy the requirement though?

Dean: The free February 2018 report on lakefront house prices.

Speaker 1: Yes, I know that one.

Dean: Well, that's my winner. I mean, that's the control. I don't know if you've seen any of these infographics for the case studies that I've been doing that prove the winningness of that one. So I'll set that up at the reining control, and more than happy I would love for somebody to knock me off of that. But the defense rests on that one. That's like I don't need to make it any better than a 10, or 11 to one ROI.

Speaker 1: How about my new book, "The Secret of Wealthy Home Sellers"?

Dean: See, that's a ... "Secrets of Wealthy Home Sellers"?

Speaker 1: No, secret. The secret.

Dean: The secret.

Speaker 1: Of wealthy home sellers.

Dean: Of wealthy home sellers, yeah. That's curiosity, that good. So the whole-

Zach: That's what I'm saying, there must be others like that, that we can use, that we can adapt-

Dean: Right, but Zach, but have we tested? But that sounds clever, and it sounds like it's something that would be a winner, but what I've really learned, and about all of this, is that what I think about something isn't what matters. Like, I wish that how to sell your house on your own, save a ton of money and laugh to yourself how easy it was, was a winning thing, right? That sometimes what we think sounds like, "Oh that's a winner," is not the thing that the market decides is the winner.

And then so I look at it that the only thing that matters, I get right back to the rudimentary objectives. The rudimentary objective is to get listings at a multiple of the money that it costs me to get that listing. So the steps that I have to take from that, I have to choose the area where I want them. I have to identify the people that are most likely to sell. I have to convince them, educate and motivate them that I'm the one that can help them, and that whenever they're ready, we're here to help them with the next step which is pinpoint price analysis, room by room review, silent market, all because I know that the conversations going on in their mind are either specifically focused on money.

We want to, "What's it worth? What's it worth?” We want to get the most out of that. Or, "Oh lord, what do we need to do get it, or should we replace the kitchen? Then we have to get a new carpet, or can we just clean this? Or what should I? I don't want anybody to see it until it's all perfectly ready." Some people that's the way they're at, and some people are just lethargic or apathetic. And if you had a buyer that might motivate. If you have a buyer, maybe that might spur them on, kind of thing.

So knowing that those are the conversations, that's how I couple that language. I mean Lupa's device, Lupa's got a device that does a ... it's like $900 device that combines red and blue led lights with galvanic waves and ultrasonic waves. And it cures adult acne, but nobody's ever heard of this thing. So it's hard to present that in an ad, but what we did was we do a book called, "The Adult Acne Cure". So now, anybody that asks for that book, now we know that they are somebody who has adult acne, or knows somebody who does and they want the cure, right?

I'm using it right now for GoGoAgent. I'm not running ads telling people about GoGoAgent and all the tools and the things, I'm running an ad on Facebook offering a free book called "The Listing Agent Lifestyle". That's the messages that resonates with the people who ... that's what I've got, is all the tools that help them live the listing agent lifestyle. So I want people who are buying into that as an idea, and then that sets a context for everything, you know?

So, I would love to test. I love that you set up scientific experiments and say that I tested this, and this improves the control by X number. But I think we get caught up sometimes in testing things that more entertain us than sustain us, right? It's a conversation I have with Zach all the time.

Speaker 2: Dean, can I comment in defense of simplicity of purpose and simplicity of message that Dean's aware of this. I went to his breakthrough blueprint about 15 months ago. I showed him an advertisement that I used to get people to financial planning workshops, and I'm a thinker, over-thinker. I thought it had a great title, and it did what all invitations do, which is offer bullet points, so my title was, "How To Reinforce Your Retirement Against Turbulent Times", which is top of mind for anybody say, 55 and over who's got some money. They're worried about a market crash.

How to maximize your social security, how to protect yourself when the market goes down, those sorts of things. Bullet points, and I would mail 10,000, and get approximately 20 families to show up for a workshop. After the breakthrough blueprint, Dean did not tell me to do this, but I looked at his resources, and you've probably seen a yellow post card, there's an example of one here. No title, it simply said this: "If you plan to retire within 12 years, or have retired, read this." Couldn't be simpler. No title, it simply said there'll be a retirement planning workshop presented at such and such a high school. There wasn't a single persuasive word in the whole piece. The simplest thing I've ever written. And my results in terms of show-ups quadrupled. Not an exaggeration, quadrupled.

Dean: I have the picture you sent me the picture.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and the point is that it was just ... Now, I told Dean that, and he said, "Do you know how many people would respond if you offered a book, or make it even easier for them to do it?" But I just offer that as maybe some inspiration to not cloud the message. If you're just looking for simplicity, what would get the most number of people to respond to that first thing and give it time, you can persuade them after. But just get them to raise their hand first, so for what that's worth in my industry. Four times the difference and nothing changed, the piece was simpler. There was nothing sales in it, all the sales came out.

Speaker 3: Try it.

Dean: Well that's the thing. That's what I did. The work I do with the financial advisors, that's the incumbent. That strategy that's winning for them is they send 10,000 invitations to Ruth's Chris, or Morton's. They come for a steak dinner, they get 50 or 60 people to come for a steak dinner, and it's so funny because they know what happens. They've got terms; they called a lot of the people that show up "plate lickers", that's the term that, "Oh, there's nothing but plate lickers here," and people who just come, they just come and- what's that?

Speaker 3: I resent that.

Dean: And so you got the plate lickers at the seminars, but what I did was, I created with a financial advisor client we did a simple post card offering a book on social security. I'm looking at the root cause of things, what gets them. I mean, these are just the simplest things.

So this is like a yellow post card, looks like direct response. But the headline says, "If you or your spouse plan on collecting social security after January 2018, read this." And then it goes on to just talk a little about the social security and everything when they pick their elections. And then we've got the, you know it looks like a government document. The cover of the book is the 2018 Social Security benefit guide. No, it's not compelling. I mean, it's not convincing. It's not saying how to maximize your retirement savings, or seven ways to get the most returns from your money. Trying to get them to think a new thought. All we want to do is get people who are thinking about and in that retirement mode.

And sometimes it's just the simplest thing. So those, where they send out the 10,000 invitations and get 50 or 60 people to come to the dinner, like Zach, and then we send the post card to a thousand. So for a thousand they would get five or six, we send a thousand and we get 20 to 30 people responding for the book.

Speaker 3: So that headline would still work for the seller.

Dean: It would, yes. But there's more, like when you look at it, what's the thought? So we're still in the situation where you could do it, you could test that thing. Especially if there's been any changes of things. Like, "If you bought a city place condo prior to this, read this" kind of things. That would be one that I might test.

Speaker 3: So one should be if you guess. Okay. Sorry.

Speaker 5: We have a lot of homes impacted by flood insurance, right. And that's coming or changing, but you could say, "You plan to sell your home after, whatever, March 2018, read this." And it could go into ... that could be, because it's something people are worrying about, and not something-

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Whatever you can tap into, you just need to get that attention engaged. That's really all it is. It's like, just one of those things where you're getting, "Oh, I was just thinking about that." And now they're into this same thing.

I mean, I've used that same format for so many things. The control for Mosquito Authority is the "If you or someone you know has been bitten by a mosquito in the last 30 days, read this." And that is- exactly, it's scary when you look at it, but it's not really saying anything scary. You're bringing that scariness with it, right?Absolutely. And then we carry that on when people call in, everything is all just this conversation, to incrementally move people to the thing. So we offer a free mosquito treatment. So you get scared or concerned, realize this is something that is... because the CDC has issued an emergency for Zika and West Nile, so it's a real thing. And we start out with that, you are concerned about it, and then the way to calm that fear, or calm that concern, is you can schedule a free mosquito treatment so you get to immediately put out that fire that you started.

I mean, we carry on even though as soon as somebody calls in we keep that going. So the first thing is they answer the phone, and they say, "I'm calling about the free mosquito treatment. I need to get that scheduled." And the first question is, "Is everybody okay?" So immediately bring it right back to that tone, because what I had to do, this is a franchise operation, and what people were doing was as soon as people call in, they were saying, "How big is your yard?", or "Are you interested in the recurring service, or just the free treatment?" Are you a plate licker, or are you going to give us some money?" Kind of thing, right?

So I had to bring it down to the process is, "Is everybody okay? Now what's going on in your yard?" And have them tell where the worst situation is. And you hear stories like, "Well, we love to garden, and we can't even stay out. As soon as the sun starts going down, we get driven in." Or, "My kids go out and play in the yard, and they come in with all these welts and I know that's not good." Or, "I get eat up just walking from my house to the car." So you're hearing what they're saying, taking notes on that, what their "why" is for this, and then immediately just saying, "We're going to send somebody out there, we'll be there tomorrow, and you don't need to be there. Is there any pets in the yard, or anything that we need to know about? We'll get out there tomorrow and get that treatment." Then, go out and do.

No selling, not trying to convince somebody to keep on with the recurring treatment. It's about letting them experience it. They've never heard of it, they're skeptical about whether you can really get rid of mosquitoes, right? But it's dramatic. In my courtyard, when you go into the house at night, because the lights on in the thing, all the mosquitoes up against the window, and at night it's like this, open the door and get in real quick and close it so that fewer of the mosquitoes get in the house. But when I had Mosquito Authority, they treat the whole courtyard, the whole thing. I could leave the door wide, there're no mosquitoes there. It's a dramatic and noticeable difference immediately. So once people experience that, then you're anchoring back to it.

We send the emails and say, "Hey Barb, everything went great. They came out and did the treatment, you'll be fine to work out in the garden tonight." And then you go out and you try it, and you're in the garden, and all of a sudden there are no mosquitoes, now you're convinced that this is a good thing, and now you're ready to hear the message that we can come back every three weeks and keep them gone forever.

Speaker 6: Okay, so along those lines, my broker, just since I've been here, sent out an email with a letter on the new tax laws that they want us to send to all our clients. But according to what you're saying, the better way to optimize that would be to take that information.

Dean: Who is it going to affect? That's the way we want to look at it, right? Who's it going to affect, and what's the change that the tax laws are going to make for somebody in a real estate situation?

Speaker 6: Right, right.

Dean: And that's where if you're looking at it for finding new people, and everything I'm talking about right now is only before unit stuff, trying to find and identify new people who you don't know. When you're communicating in your after unit with your clients, you can share everything. Just tell them how it's going to affect them. You're not trying to get them to respond to anything. They already know you, like you, and trust you. You are the incumbent.

Speaker 6: But couldn't you use that as a way to send something to the like, Revatrac Home price people, along the same lines of what you're talking about?

Dean: I would do that inside my monthly package, if it's going to do it. But I don't think that would beat the root decision of, "How much is my house worth?" That's the driving desire that people have when they are responding.

Speaker 6: Well, what about to the farm area? If Revatrac is farm area, what about-

Dean: But you've got to know what the changes are, and how they affect people, and know that they're curious about it themselves.

Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of curiosity, especially in our area which is a high price area, and so we're affected by a lot of that stuff. So what's the hook?

Dean: I don't know, that's why I asked you what's the change? You have to know, you just have to say, "Well the tax changes," but who is it going to affect, and how is it going to affect them? That's where the hook-

Speaker 6: Well it could be too much variation then, in the neighborhood. Because some people are going to be affected by that $10,000 cap on property taxes, and all that. Some are going to be affected by the $750,000 cap. So I guess it-

Dean: But if you had a report. That's a good thing for your "world's most interesting post card", actually. Where if you have a report that shows a breakdown of how the new tax laws change things. So if you're saying to your clients now one of the things you could say is, "Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about the new tax law changes and how they might affect their home. Truth is, it affects everybody differently. It could be the property tax cap, it could be the-

Speaker 6: Mortgage cap.

Dean: Could be the mortgage cap, whatever it is. If you hear someone talking about it, give me a call, or text me. I'll get you a copy of our 'Here's What You Need To Know About the New Tax Law Changes' booklet to give to them." That's how you look at information like that.

Speaker 6: Thanks.

Speaker 7: Does the mosquito postcard still have the ER entrance picture on the front?

Dean: The ER entrance? Oh, no, what we do is it's the same chassis. It's that yellow background, red public notice. The first one we did was somewhere right outside of Atlanta-

Speaker 1: Alpharetta?

Dean: No. It was south, I think. Oh, it was Stone Mountain, actually, that's what it was. So public notice, Stone Mountain, Georgia, and then the thing is, "If you or someone you know has been bitten by a mosquito in the last 30 days, read this." The graphic is a map with a border around Stone Mountain, and then it's all, "The CDC has issued an emergency advisory about Zika and West Nile, symptoms are this, this, this." These things.

Speaker 1: So you're the one who started the rumor not to buy in Stone Mountain.

Dean: They're overrun by mosquitoes. That's funny, John, you had something. We panned it down to-

Speaker 3: Circling back to Tom, because you asked us what did we come away with yesterday, and one thing that I really came away with was Tom had talked about his book, and you said the control is the post card, and I'd invested some creative time in creating this post card about a book for people who need to know more about probate, because someone in their family has passed, and they don't know what to do. They really don't. I've had family members go through this, and they're like, "I'm handling this, it's way more of a hassle that I thought it would be. I don't know what I'm doing, I wish someone old me this, I wish someone told me that." So I thought, "Well, I'll use the book technology and I'll offer that as bait."

But then I heard you say, "But the best thing is the post card we're already using." So I'm thinking, "Well, should I just take my post card that says for the Harvard blaster report, and just call it Pinellas County since I'm selling Pinellas County probate, and just say, "If you are interested in finding out what the value of your Pinellas County home is," and sending it to the executor, they're having that same thought process in their mind of, "What's this place worth?"

Dean: That's exactly right. And it would be valuable-

Speaker 3: So maybe the post card, or maybe I run them both and see, I don't know. But I was thinking, "Boy, did I waste all my time doing this when I could have just used Dean's post card," like you told me to do in the first place.

Dean: But there's always experimentation and testing, but it's always like I'm never going to come here to you and share something with you that is not documented and tested and proven. So I'm not coming with a hypothesis.

Speaker 3: So the answer to the question is test if you want to, but we know this post card works.

Dean: Absolutely. And I encourage you to test. I encourage you to test stuff. But I have this suspicion I can't get people to execute in a disciplined way the things that I've already proven work. And I think that what happens is that people love to dabble or experiment or just like test something to see what happens without committing to testing it all the way through to document the results. Like Jonas Salk.

Speaker 7: So I've had a thought about seeing the variations on the post cards that are being sent, and the lower results, and it's almost ... I don't like to take a critical eye, but if I were to say, "Does this exclude anyone?" So you're sending out something about a report that affects not the majority of people, because the majority of people are really concerned about the price. A subset of them are really concerned about a tax change, or whatever that subset was, and if you focus on that tax subset, the rest of that populations going to go, "Oh, so you're a tax expert, toss." But really we want to sell houses, and what everyone is ultimately concerned about is price. I that's just-

Dean: Well that's the Genesis thought. That's what starts it, right?

Speaker 7: As I hear this, I'm applying it to my other printer business, I mean I wracked my brain on this because I'm so close to it. Oh, people want to buy printers because they want better quality. And ultimately I've written it down, it's they want to avoid paying too much for supplies. That is universally everybody's fear. Or paying too much for the printer, I think that catches everybody.

Dean: That's the whole thing. Market data always wins, as compelling stuff. Because we crave it, we just want to know the real information. And that's something, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 8: I remember years ago Joe Stump said, "Implement before you innovate." And that was a huge "ah-ha" concept for me-

Dean: Yeah, imitate.

Speaker 8: Because I wanted to go right to the innovation, and I didn't want to deal with the implementation because it was somebody else's stuff. And I think that's what a lot of us struggle with. I mean, I know Nancy was talking about like, "I'm bored with this," and it's just years, and years, and years of doing this that I know you have to kind of stuff that down, because that's us. That's not them. And it's just that awareness.

Dean: But the thing that never gets boring is depositing commission checks. Are you bored with that? Right, I mean that's the thing. Is let's just take it all the way, I don't think all the way around is nobody's bored depositing commission checks. Nobody's bored negotiating contracts. Nobody's bored taking listings. Those are the three things that my aspiration is that you stay up and do those three things, and let other people do everything else, and you have a fun life. Entertain yourself in your life, not your business.

Speaker 9: So I've run into people that are getting listings, and then they're hand delivering the package, and so what I love, and so I'm just trying to make sure that I see this, is your process really is wait until they come to you. So it's do this, so technically it could be again, all this done up front until it's time for somebody to want to get in conversation. Because, that can be a tiring process. I was trying to clean up my language, but I was listening.

Dean: And the reason that people do it is because they want to go, and they want to speed up the process in a way.

Speaker 9: Yes.

Speaker 1: They want to skip the steps.

Speaker 9: Yes. So I want to feel confident that doing this just mail, do, when people say. Because the reason I'm asking is on the other side, we've been doing that with buyers for 12 years, and the irony is when they finally say I'm coming to town, it's a five star client, it's just like, they trust you like this because for six years you've just answered their questions, never sold them anything, and they just know that you're not high pressure. So I'm believing that this is the same mentality, it's just we're impatient. But it's like just do this, and then, okay. I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything like, "No, you need to be going and knock on the door, and run here."

Dean: The secret handshake. You got to go give them the secret handshake.

Speaker 9: Once you get the listing and the multipliers, you want to be there and be visible, I got that. But I was just, you know. Because I did it, I went and knocked on someone's door, and I realized that I was kind of getting to convincing with that. I was like, "And here's this book I wrote," and it's sort of like, I put something on my computer, I didn't expect a real person at my door. It was awkward for both of us.

Dean: Exactly, yeah. I should get JP Sears to do a video about that. That would be the funniest thing ever.

Speaker 10: Can I ask you a question in our market? I mean, I had a couple questions from yesterday, and if it's not the right thing. One is, do you mail, because we have a lot of second home kind of people, so do you mail to the address, or to the tax record?

Dean: Tax record.

Speaker 10: Okay.

Dean: Go to where the owner is, not to the house, yeah. Or both.

Speaker 10: And then if you have people international, does anybody have experience handling that, or do you...

Dean: In what way?

Speaker 10: The owners are Canadian, or

Dean: That happens a lot.

Speaker 10: Yeah. Which we're happy about by the way, it's just a different part of the process, right?

Dean: I got you, right.

Speaker 10: Like Prospects Plus, can they handle mail it to Canadians?

Dean: Well, you're not mailing the "Getting Listings" post cards to Canadians, or you're not mailing. No, all the Prospects Plus is really just US Postal Service, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10: So if I was mailing at the beaches, and X percent of the people, just say 10% live in the UK or Canada, do I just ignore them at this point?

Dean: No, no. You would get enough cards for everything, but it requires different postage. So you would just do the addresses. You can get Prospects Plus to do the addressing, so you get the cards with the address, and then you just have to apply the postage to it, yeah.

Speaker 10: Okay.

Speaker 11: So four years ago I started sending out the "Getting Listings" post cards into about 14 condo towers, and they all had 25% rental rate, but the leads probably were about 45% from 900 occupants. There were only 25% of the building, so we were doing both. So we got both buyers who wanted the report; I'm sorry, tenants-

Dean: Because they want to think about buying one of them.

Speaker 11: ... so I would definitely do the international, because you're probably the only one sending international postcards.

Dean: Yeah, for sure. But there's a perfect example, is that dude that we played the voice mail from yesterday for Kenny lived in Florida. Kenny's been sending him stuff about his beach house in Massachusetts. Kenny was his lifeline, the only person who's giving him that. And then he cut him off and he started chasing the boat. "Wait, what about me!" "Have you seen Kenny? Are you Kenny? He's in the next boat." "Okay."

Speaker 11: Well one of our non-owner occupants owned 14 units in seven or eight different buildings from Fort Lauderdale, retired doctor. And we sold all those within 12 months, as each lease expired.

Dean: I love it. That's perfect. Now that's a good thing to do, to look for the portfolio owners in your market. That's a really good idea.

Speaker 12: I just wanted to get a little bit of clarity. After the post card, somebody raises their hand, and I have some auto responders set up. I don't think they're on all of mine, but they are on some, and one of the auto responders is an email basically. We received, we're putting it together. "May I ask if you are planning to move or just keeping up with the neighborhood?" That's one, and I'm wondering if we should be continuing with that.

Dean: I wouldn't.

Speaker 12: Okay.

Dean: Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

Speaker 12: Okay. And then there's another one that was set up, that is I think some time after that where, "I have a buyer, may I come over and take a look at your house?", and that doesn't feel good at all.

Dean: Not like that. The thing of what I'm talking about is, being a market maker, that really is when it's real, and you send it specifically to them, and you say, "Connie, I'm showing houses this weekend in River Run, and you live in River Run, and there's only a couple for sale in there right now. I remember looking up your house when I sent you the River Run price report. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd check in see maybe if I can tell them about your house."

When we first discovered that, that was where we were running the- we did that with Julie. That we had the lake front guide that we were running for buyers, we had the "Getting Listings" for the lake front homes, and this was in April that the person replied from Stuart, Florida, and said, "I sold my house, and on your lake front newsletter I'm looking for a lake front house up to $375 with this, and this, and this." And then literally within an hour of getting that one, had an email from somebody on the listing side saying, "We've been getting your newsletters, and we're ready to put our house on the market. We've got this, and we figure it's worth $375," which was just like ... that was the birth of the whole market maker thing, in my mind.

And so we ended up then sending a message to everybody that had replied to the postcards from January. This was April now, so we just went to those, it was like 39 people that we had emails for. I sent that out, and literally within 30 hours had 27 responses to the email, and two people who wanted to come have Julie come over and see about listing their house. And so that was really amazing, how that happened. So then I built that into the whole system, now. We've had so much great success with that, with being a market maker, but that's a situational paying attention and authentic type of thing, versus "Hey, I've got a buyer," auto responder message. The different-

Speaker 12: Right, I think I have them all deleted, but yeah, okay. And one other quick question, on the packets we send out, does it matter how much information we put in? I put the newsletter, I put the cover letter, and I put the MLS report. The initial one I put more in-

Dean: Everything, yeah.

Speaker 12: ... but, the monthly ones doesn't matter.

Dean: Well, the monthly ones the baseline is the cover letter, the newsletter, and the updated information. Then everything else that you do from there are things that are moving forward. Like, "Helping People on the Move" is a good insert, an info box flier about your new listing in that neighborhood is a good thing. A market maker message, a lift note. All those little things that you can do to communicate within that package are all really good things, but they're kind of unique. Those are the things that require your addition to it. I can't do those things for you, but you can add that way, and it all makes a big difference.

Speaker 12: Okay. Thanks.

Dean: Yeah, cool.

Speaker 13: Getting back to what you were talking about, about dropping the earth packages and so on and so forth, and I think we talked about this on the call, or some time, but when we get started with buyers, there's like a psychological difference, at least for me. When I started with the buyers versus with the listings, because years ago, I would spend $500 or $1000, and you got more buyers for the amount of money that you spend, so it felt like you were doing more, but you weren't guaranteed to do business with those buyers. And we're doing, if you're sending the weekly market watch, you're essentially doing kind of the same thing. But there is a difference between sending the "Getting Listings" post cards, and for some reason, it may just be me, but it's a psychological thing. I continue to do it.

Dean: In what way? What do you mean, there's a psychological difference?

Speaker 13: For some reason it was just different. It was probably because you get more responses, and maybe a little more involved, because we send out the thing; that's a weekly kind of thing. And we send out the monthly update, and now I've gotten to the point where I've got somebody working with me that's going to be putting that together, so now I'm even more detached from it. Well, I do too, but there's also a little bit when you're detached from things-

Dean: You're on the right path. When you start feeling detached from things, you're on the right path.

Speaker 13: But there's a certain mental thing too in knowing ... I mean, I'm confident she's getting it all done right and I can do it right, but it's just a little ... getting used, I guess, just looking at the numbers. And saying the thing.

Dean: And that's the thing is when you're looking at the metrics and you can see what's happening, and the fact that everything is happening as usual, it's so great.

Speaker 13: Well, I'm working on getting to that stage.

Dean: You're getting there.

Speaker 13: But there is for me a different feeling, for some reason, I don't know what it ... I think we chat a little bit about that, but I don't know exactly what it is. But there's something psychological about when I started with the buyers versus the listings, because the buyers was easier to ... if I wanted to revamp it up real high. Because the listings is more of a commitment, you really have to sit down and say, "Okay, I'm going to spend this amount of money, and I'm going to spend it every single month, and I'm going to do this over and over again."

To where the buyers, you could adjust it with a little more freedom, I guess. So that's probably part of it too, it's the commitment part of it. And making sure that you do it, because in the beginning, I bit off more than I can chew to sustain it. So when I got started with the buyers, said, "Okay, well I made some money here," then I started with the sellers. And it was really too much at the time to do it all.

Dean: I get it. That's the thing, is patience counts, and it's like a lot of it is mental too. A lot of it is wrapping your mind around the certainty with which the money's going to return. That's really the thing. In terms of spending the- because that's all it is really, is spending the money. You get to the point where it can all be done. It's not like you're physically doing anything to make it happen. You can literally get to a point where it's all just money that's doing, and then it becomes just with the certainty that that money's going to come back multiplied.

Speaker 13: Well, and that is the big thing. I mean, I was in the real estate business for years, but since how I got started with you, and then build it out a year or two years, then you start to see that, and then you're able to, like you were talking about, confidently invest. Okay, I got X amount of thousand dollars, and here's where we're going to put it, and here's what I want to expect to get back.

Dean: Does anybody else deal with that? Mentally. Okay.

Speaker 4: Do you have any stats, just in general, like obviously they can vary, but you know?

Dean: Yeah, all these infographics that I show you are like 10 times ROI's on stuff, right, so-

Speaker 13: How much runway you have, though. That's what the- when are we going to go broke? If you can hang on, you're going to be great.

Dean: I get it. And there's the thing-

Speaker 13: And that's where we run into all these questions about how long, and trying to make things faster.

Dean: I get it.

Speaker 13: It's the long, like you're talking about, it really, truly is the long ... and if you sit down and- right, exactly. If you sit down and say five, eight, 10 years down the road, what is this? But you got to get to five, eight, 10 years down the road.

Dean: I'm not even talking five, eight, 10 years down the road. I'm talking about how long it takes to reach escape philosophy. That's the whole-

Speaker 13: My wife is also in the real estate business, she's very supportive of this. She thinks the program makes sense, but I am just dying for the day to go, "Here's the check for $8000, and I've only put in $1500, and the rest is house money." And then it's like I'm done, and I just keep it going. That's what I'm waiting for.

Dean: And that's why I say to people, like to start with what you can manage. What you feel like you can put aside. And there's the thing, when I reframe this in people's minds, that if you were investing, like look at is as an investment in a 12 month certificate of deposit. That you're putting the money here, you're not expecting anything to happen with it until 12 months from now when you can cash it in for $101.

Speaker 13: Right.

Dean: Instead of the $100 that you put in. We're talking about certificates of deposit that you could put $1000 in, and get $10,000 in one year. But that's really the- what's that? Yeah, but I'm talking about a CD, a certificate of deposit, or a mutual fund, or anything. This is what I want, like it's almost like getting that mindset where you're taking ... A lot of times people have no problem, and they think they're doing the right thing by taking and putting money into their IRA, or into their mutual funds, and that's ... Even if you pick the best mutual funds, you're going to put $1000 in a mutual fund, and at the end of next 12 months, you might have $1200 in that.

Speaker 13: Right, 20%.

Dean: Absolutely. And that would be a home run. Everybody would absolutely be happy to have that outcome. And so that's what I'm talking about is to take this, that we've got a preponderance of evidence that the money invested in a thousand home area where you want to dominate and be the agent there, is going to yield multiples of that investment.

Speaker 13: And then you own it. That's the infographic, right, the Tony infographic. That's why I have a bulletin board over my desk that I keep very clean, and this is right there. And I keep looking at that graph going, "I haven't caught 'em yet, I haven't caught 'em yet, but I will." And the other thing I tell myself, because you say, "Do other people struggle with that?" And I definitely do. I keep thinking, "I want this to work, I believe it will work." But I think back to quote a classic Napoleon Hill, that one of his most basic things that you have to have to succeed in business is faith. So just have the faith that it's going to work, keep your faith up-

Dean: Here's the thing. Even if you run out of runway, even if you run out of fuel, or whatever, right, what you've still got though is you've got the cargo that you loaded on while you go. And so you've got everybody that's responded so far all you really, like don't look at that as a failure that you're not continuing to mail and collect new people, is you've got these people and still continue to mail to those, because those are the ones that are getting closer to maturity anyway, right? And still look for getting your return on investment there, even if you can take it.

Speaker 13: I can certainly speak to that, because I've run out of runway several times over the past several years, but it's not that you run out of runway like you're talking about, you just pull off on the throttle. I think what you're talking about with the tendency is to, with the investment idea, because the tendency is to want to convert your whole business immediately over to this philosophy which is great.

But in the end, I mean after doing it for several years, unless you're starting in a very good financial cash position, it's difficult to do that. So you have to eventually have the goal, just like you're talking about, and that's the great way I think to look at it is this is my Dean Jackson investment account. Eventually would like to be doing everything this way, but you've just got to work to that point.

Dean: Right, but I look at it that if it came down right to it, if it was- what do we got here? Oh, wow. That if you had an opportunity: I have my BMW that we went to the movies in last night there. If I said to anyone of you, "Listen, I'll sell you that car. I need the money and I need to get it today, I'll sell you that car for $20,000." How many people would be able to find $20,000? It's an $110,000 car. Would anybody be able to come up with $20,000 to buy that car today? Yeah, would you take an IOU? You look at that, I'm saying that that level of if I can get people out of this mindset of thinking about, "I gotta come up with this money every month for the thing," if I could get you to think about how could you gather up, where could you get access to $10,000, or to $20,000 if you have some investment capital for your business that you're going to invest in running these programs without regard to that I need to get the money to pay the credit card bill for the postcards that just went out last month, or whenever, to give yourself that investment mindset as opposed to the, "I gotta make the money to pay these expenses," of doing it.

It's a shift, and it may be where you're looking at it, that it may be instead of investing more money in your IRA this year, or it may be getting a new credit card that has a $10,000 limit on it, and just using that as the money. We know that it's going to be a big return on the money.

Speaker 14: You're raising your hand, I just had a comment on that. I have a number of developer clients, and we're, actually last night after we left here we were going over spreadsheet stuff, because we're looking at making offers on a number of properties, and what's funny is we as realtors take for granted the fact that we have the best business model of any other business out there. So-

Dean: It's ridiculous.

Speaker 14: It's crazy, I mean this guy, we're looking at, okay we're going to buy dirt for 1.7, he's going to invest another, let's say, 1.2, so he's going to have almost $3 million on the board, so that he can make a few hundred thousand dollars, which will basically be like a 14% return, right. And he's going to have all this money out on the board, and we're like, "I don't know if I can spend $5000 man, like it's a lot of money," and he's like hitting margin account, I mean to get portions of the down payment funds. Lines of credit, and so the reality is we can all go get a business line of credit, or a credit card-

Dean: That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 14: ... right, and it's like, okay, would I go ... For you're talking about like an 1100% return, like let's see, would I go borrow money on a credit card at 14%? It seems like a solid business choice.

Dean: If any one of you went to your bank and said, "I'd like to get a credit line," they without question would give you a 20 or $30,000 credit line at prime. I mean it's cheap, cheap, cheap. It's ridiculous. So, that mindset, I'll tell you. The largest sale that I ever made in my real estate career was a $4 million dollar farm just outside of Toronto in Halton Hills, and the family that bought it, they're developers.

They've been developing in Toronto since the 50s, and they've kind of like inevitably, you see the city marching out. Oh you're in Toronto, okay. So in Halton Hills, you know when you're on Steel's before you get into Halton Hills there. So this was in 1989, they bought this farm for $4 million, and they ended up actually having to pay $500,000 more for it because the survey. They contested the survey, it was being offered as 100 acres, and they thought it was smaller than that, so they had to put a condition in the offer that they would get it resurveyed and the price would adjust by $125,000 per acre, right? Smaller? So they had it surveyed, and it turned out it was 104 acres, so they had to pay $500,000 more for it when they thought they were going to get it at a discount.

But, what I learned from that is they were buying that with a 30 year window. It wasn't anywhere close to being developed at the time, and just now 30 years later, it's just starting to get developed on the other side of the street, in the next five years it'll be right on the other side there. But they're buying generational investments, you know.

Speaker 14: That's the going rate.

Dean: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the thing, right? It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, who knows. I mean, 104 acres in ... yeah, who knows what that's worth right now? But that is just a, you know. Somebody bought the first beach front property in Malibu, and said, "Boy this is a long way from the city." I mean, it's like, yeah. Pretty funny, but yeah. Zach.

Zach: Well I've been talking and thinking about running the buyer ads for many years, maybe even the whole decade, and so I look at is as an investment, and I've negotiated with seven different publications to run full page ads, and it's $112,000 investment over the next year. I did put a contingency in my contract that after 90 days I could downsize the ad considerably. Even though I know it's going to work, so I just look at that as an investment, because I can imagine the amount of ... I mean the leads are going to be cheaper than Zillow.

Dean: Well you guys know this is the thing, because nobody ... you know Ivan Dejordan, I mean you guys know Ivan too. So in Georgetown he ran for a full year the "How To Sell Your House For Top Dollar Fast" book offer in the independent half page ad. Negotiated a flat rate, I'm not going to change the ad, I'm going to run it every week for a year. $10,000, they gave it to him for $200 a week, and so he ran that, and made $84,000 in commissions from people that he sold their house in that first year, then didn't run the ad, and made another $80,000 in the second year from the people who responded in the first. And it's been even more since then. So, yeah, it is.

When you find a thing like that, that's why I call it oil wells. You dig the well, and all the expense and the cost is knowing where to dig, and then pumping until the oil starts coming, but once it starts coming, it's coming, and coming, and coming. You know. Yeah. It's such a big thing. It's a money mindset more than anything, it's that if you have the certainty, you would feel more invested. And I'm not saying to people to like ... and I get it, that sometimes you get in situations where there's isn't that money to do it, and that's why I'm saying look for taking on a small thing that you can do until you reach that escape velocity, until you get that return, and then reinvesting and bumping up.

By the way, that's what Tony Kelsey did. Tony started out with $2000 in Canada, spending 2000's no different than sending a thousand here, it's much less expensive to do it, but he started out with that, and then when he did the first transaction then he immediately bumped up to 5000, then to 7500, and now he's doing 20,000; he's doing the whole MLS district. Fantastic.

Speaker 15: So a little bit of cleaning house. On the newsletter, we've been using the same one for a few years, should I say? 15, thank you. That sounds about right for me too. Is there any updating that I've missed, and is there any updating that's being planned for the newsletters?

Dean: I don't do the newsletter. I mean, which newsletters are you talking about?

Speaker 15: The ones that go out in the "Getting Listings" package?

Dean: Well, why would that matter? I mean, the thing is that you're not ... it's not to entertain you.

Speaker 15: Well, I guess I need to read-

Dean: The point is when somebody raises their hand-

Speaker 15: Wait, wait, wait.

Dean: ... if they haven't ... I was just going to say that Seinfeld hasn't been on, hasn't been a new Seinfeld episodes in 20 years, and it's been in syndication for that entire time, and now just sold again to Hulu for $100 million.

Speaker 15: Oh, jeez.

Dean: I'm just saying that there's not ... When somebody responds, it doesn't ... they haven't seen them. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 15: Only until the second year.

Speaker 2: They don't remember.

Speaker 15: They don't remember.

Speaker 6: Four and five years, and they're getting the same newsletter for 12 months for five years.

Dean: Chester chased down Kenny's boat. He got so mad that he stopped sending them to him.

Speaker 6: I want to back-

Dean: But that's ... oh, okay.

Speaker 7: I think we can underestimate the quality of material we're sending out. I look at this, I've been a watcher of the real estate industry for years, and so I'm like, okay, just bite my lips and do this, and I'm putting together that little booklet, and my daughters who's 25 took a look at it and said, "Dad, this is amazing."

Meanwhile, inside I'm going, "This is just so old." I've seen so many versions of this, but from her eyes, now she's never bought a house, right, but to her it's really, really high quality. So I think we can look at the same thing when we're looking at the newsletters, and updates and all that. It doesn't have to be PHD quality to us, just a little bit more than they know, and that's it.

Dean: That's exactly right, yeah. And that hasn't stopped, you know there's the thing. I look for things that it's not slowing us down in any way.

Speaker 6: Okay, so that kind of leads me into my real question-

Dean: Oh, okay, a real question. See what you did there, that was a nice, a pre-sueder.

Speaker 6: Well, because it's kind of, who comes into your life at the time, and I have hired a young lady to help me get my guides. My living in or the guide, you know those guides. She's a musician, so she's making them look beautiful. So I'm worried. Is that going to be an issue to have them look too nice? And we're actually looking at making them an online delivery with Adobe Sparks.

Dean: Well, you can do that, but there's certainly something magical about the physical holding something in your hand, too.

Speaker 6: Right, but if it's a beautiful presentation, is that going to take away from getting the information through?

Dean: It's not going to take away.

Speaker 6: Okay, you made me feel better.

Dean: But it's not ... there's a difference between being too slick, or no substance kind of thing, right? That's really what we're looking at is simple. Think like Apple. Think the way Apple is, everything about it is just simple, but the information is there.

Speaker 3: In the full page buyer ads that I'll be running-

Dean: Yes, I can't wait to, like this is great. I'm going to have some test runs with you.

Speaker 3: Okay. Well, I'm ready, so. We talked about you were ready last year, so let's do it this year. But what do you think about offering my second book, "27 Mistakes Home Buyers Make, and How To Avoid Them" included in the ad for my book.

Dean: I wouldn't include it in the ad. This is what I've learned, is the separation of as I get more and more experience, and more varied experiences in this from- and I think one of the things that really helps what we do on the real estate side, is all the experiences that I have and get to experiment outside of real estate to bring that back. That when I look at the biggest insight that I've had in maybe the last five years, is the separation of the compelling and the convincing.

And the compelling is self-interest, it's what is people are magnetized to it. They're much more interested in a US hockey scholarship, then they are about how to brand yourself and make yours stand out, right. Because but now that they have this information, now this information makes sense. They're much more interested in "101 Great Places To Have an Outdoor Wedding" than they are "Seven Mistakes Everybody Makes when Hiring a Party Planner", right? They're more interested in that message now that they're moving in that direction, but let's address the first thing.

Even with the financial advisors. We had a financial advisor in London who was running things that were how to maximize your retirement returns, and all convincing stuff. Trying to convince somebody that you know something they don't. Qualitative information. Your opinion, your information that you have. What, in the UK, what happens when people retire, is when they hit 65, they get their pension in a lump sum, or a monthly draw down. They get it themselves right then. So what most people do is they take the lump sum, and they invest some portion of that in an annuity, and create their controlling it then. They're not leaving it in the hands of their employer or the Government.

So what we did was put together the February 2018 report on UK annuity yields, which is market data, which anybody who's considering an annuity would want to know. So you can see in their mind, they're going to be like, "Oh, this is going to be great. There's the report, there's number one. I'll put my money in there, who needs a financial advisor? I'm the smartest advisor I could ever imagine." That's what people think, if they just had access to the thing, that they would do it. Now, that offer went from 6% conversion from the ad, people going to his landing page, to 28% conversion. Same amount of space, same intention of generating leads, but we got four or five times more response, because we were focused on compelling people more than convincing people.

Once they raise their hand, now we can convince them. Now we can convince them with a message that now that you've got the access to all of the annuity yields, you might be thinking it's as easy as put your money in the top rated one, and you're all set, but there's so much more that goes into it, and now you're into having that conversation on the back of you've got all the information that you thought you wanted.

Same thing as the venues. You start from what they were compelled by, and then you start convincing along the way. But you always lead with what they want first. Lead with that information first, you know. Yeah. Okay. Barb, where are we here? Zach?

Speaker 16: We're in the process of converting my Verizon telephone guy into a realtor, and he's going to be able, once he's licensed, to help me with some things. But also in order to mentor him, and be able to get him started, a lot of times new agents want to start with buyers because it's less expensive for them. So, picking up on what Zach is saying, running a buyers ad, then what should that first buyers ad be if you're trying to be compelling as opposed to convincing, and-

Dean: Well, all those things is what- this is what I talk about like the category buyers. So we're going to do a session right after lunch all about the finding buyers, so let's leave that conversation to there, because that will be a perfect fit for it, and these ads will be the perfect-

Speaker 16: Here's my question on that that you can think about, because I'm sure you're going to cover, is he's 35. So advertising in the newspaper, is that still going to be the right place, or are we talking Facebook ads, or what are we talking about? For a young person.

Dean: Well, it doesn't matter. The actual money hasn't changed. It doesn't make a difference. I always point, like print ads I think are still a bargain, and becoming more and more so. I look at them as like the true set it and forget it type of thing. If you find the right place, it's like opening up a retail shop in a busy mall, being in the right place.

Speaker 16: Okay.

Dean: So, yeah. Let's do this: let's take a quick break.

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